Unconventionals: All About Innovation
Dr. Rashid Khan, Head of Intellectual Property at Saudi Aramco, provided a bit of perspective to delegates at the Unconventional Gas Forum in Barcelona, Spain.
In 1899, he recalled Charles Doyle was the head of the US patent office: “He said ‘Everything that can be invented, has already been invented.’ And that was before a whole lot of things that we take for granted every single day.”
Dr. Khan followed up with a quote from 1958 from a professor at the University of Oklahoma. “He said ‘We usually find oil in a new place with old ideas; sometimes we find oil in an old place with a new idea; but seldom do we find much oil in an old place with an old idea.’”
“Several times in the past, we thought that we were running out of oil, whereas actually we were running out of ideas,” he explained. “To survive, we must innovate. Innovation means change and change is basically unconventional thinking. So what is needed for unconventional gas is more unconventional thinking.”
With that in mind, Khan spoke about emerging technologies and innovations for tight gas reservoir development, saying that Europe could benefit a great deal from what had happened elsewhere.
In reference to the “shale gas revolution” his presentation noted, “This revolution unfolded with no grand opening ceremony, no ribbon cutting. It just crept up.”
Shale gas reserves, he noted, were a function of technology and innovation. “And innovation will address whatever challenges that we face including the social challenges.”
“Future innovation will occur in a unexpected manner, because a lot of intermediate work is going on all over the world, and perhaps in an unexpected area. What needs to be done is continuous innovation. Innovation, technology and know-how developed in the US are available for the world; new technology is now a commodity for many service companies.”
Innovations connected to horizontal/directional wells and hydraulic fracturing were what had made unconventional gas a game changer, according to Prof. Khan. Multi-well pads would reduce the environmental footprint. He noted there were numerous innovations in terms of slick water and additives.
“There are a lot of inventions along this line,” he said showing a graph of innovations, “to reduce the amount of water, and the additive and to make it greener.”
He listed the various types of hydraulic fracturing and various inventions as a function of time. Prof. Khan presented a “Vern-Relationship Diagram” which showed the combinations of additives used in hydraulic fracturing; major additive classes like surfactants, breakers and corrosion inhibitors had been used along with many other additives.
“It’s also possible to cluster based on the type of a given invention, which may not only use a corruption inhibitors, anti oxidants. So we see the length of various inventions can be very complicated.”
Prof. Khan said, “Fifty percent of the data set that we have is focused primarily on hydraulic fracturing, various technologies being evolved. Just about every company has some trademarked products like slickwater, chemical induced fracturing, foam fracturing, carbon dioxide, or pneumatic fracturing.”
He spoke of his research data set, which mostly consisted of inventions in cracking methods including hydraulic, slickwater, acid, thermal, foam, pneumatic, chemical-induced reaction pressure pulses, proppants and additives.
According to him, major players who held patents were Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, Halliburton, BP, and Shell who owned about 50% of the inventions. Dr. Khan listed some of their specialties: “Schlumberger is a key player focused on hydraulic fracturing, slickwater or acid fracturing; Halliburton and Baker Hughes are focused on hydraulic fracturing based on the path data; ExxonMobil has an invention in multi-stage and thermal and hydraulic fracturing; Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Halliburton focus on proppants such as water blockage and damage control.”
“Smaller players can embrace unique approaches,” he said.
Innovation could also help the industry deal with some of the public acceptance issues. Citing an MIT study that looked at the incidence of groundwater contamination in gas well drilling from 2005-09 for 5,000 wells, Prof. Khan said there were only 20 incidents.
“This is a very small number – not as alarming as some people believe.”
One way to present the risks, he said, was to list what chemicals that were being added to a hydraulic fracturing operation, and what the common, everyday uses were for those.
He concluded, “This sort of information is useful, along with the patent data that a company has perhaps protected, you can get this sort of information from their ‘proprietary package’. So that information is helpful for calming the public.”